by Brittany N. Gaddy

The Colvin Institute of Real Estate held a webinar Wednesday for the University of Maryland community about gentrification and the deracination of the Black community in Harlem, New York and Washington as a part of the institute’s fall lecture series.

Willow Lung-Amam, an associate professor of the urban studies and planning program and the director of community development for the National Center of Smart Growth Research and Education at this university, moderated the event.

The term “gentrification” originated in 1964 from Ruth Glass, a British sociologist who studied London communities. She observed an influx of middle and upper-income people moving into working-class communities, which led to the displacement of the working-class residents, Derek Hyra, a public administration and policy professor at American University, said during the panel.

Glass’s observations were based on class, but gentrification in the U.S. is based on race, he further explained.

“It typically is upper-income whites and white-controlled money coming into a low-income minority space,” he said.

According to Kevin McGruder, the vice president of academic affairs and history professor at Antioch College, this was evidenced in Harlem between 1904 and 1920.

Harlem became accessible to Black people because the real estate brokerage profession viewed their presence in neighborhoods as “unstabilizing and a vector for lowering property values,” he said. White people internalized that and believed the presence of Black people in their neighborhoods would lower property values, he said.

According to The Brookings Institute, neighborhoods in U.S. metropolitan areas where the population is 50% Black are priced at about half the price as homes in neighborhoods without Black residents.

Sabiyha Prince, an independent researcher, views gentrification as a part of a “cycle that rests upon disinvestment.” Capital is given to neighborhoods, but its people are not given the same access to that capital. There is an emphasis on a neighborhood’s appearance, but not on the condition of its people, she said.

Gentrification is especially prevalent in Washington, Hyra pointed out.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition ranked the nation’s capital 13th of the most “intensely gentrified cities” in America this year.

A story map, created by researchers at the University of California Merced, of Navy Yard, a neighborhood in D.C., revealed the median household income of its residents increased ten times its amount since 2000 and the average home value tripled.

And according to its findings, Navy Yard’s Black population decreased from 95 percent in 2000 to 24 percent in 2018, while its white population increased from 3 percent to 68 percent during the same period.

In College Park, though, there are fears that the Purple Metro Line will cause further gentrification. To combat this fear, the Purple Line Corridor Coalition is advocating for the preservation of affordable homes.

McGruder acknowledged that the pandemic has affected gentrification to a certain degree. While the pandemic may slow it down, it’s not going to completely eradicate gentrification, he said. Instead, it may take some of the pressure off of urban neighborhoods by shifting gentrification to other areas.

The pandemic could result in the displacement of low-income families from their homes at an increased rate because of the government’s lack of aid for them, Hyra said.

According to Forbes, about 127.5 million stimulus checks were sent from the IRS. College students listed as dependants, those without a social security number and spouses to those  without a social security number were not included, Business Insider reported.

“It’s pretty scary right now,” he said. “There is a moratorium on evictions, but that’s going to end. And when that ends, people are going to be forced out.”

The moratorium on evictions in Maryland ended on July 25. But Gov. Larry Hogan issued an executive order that temporarily prohibits evictions if the tenant can prove he or she suffered a substantial loss of income due to the pandemic.

An order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also prohibits the eviction of tenants before December 31 if they meet certain conditions.

A loss of culture and health comes with displacement from gentrification, Prince said. “If you’re displacing the people, you’re displacing the culture,” she said

It also leaves working-class people vulnerable when their networks are eradicated, which they typically rely on for transportation and childcare, she said. When this support is undermined, it can make people vulnerable in terms of their health and economic standing.

According to the CDC, some of the health consequences of displacement include: a shorter life expectancy, an increased rate of asthma and cardiovascular disease.

Gentrification is a result of policy, Prince said, citing the policies that caused her grandfather’s home in Harlem to be torn down. “We got here through policy … [and] we’re going to get out of it through policy.”

Redlining, the restriction of loans or services to certain communities, and blockbusting, white property owners selling their houses below market value because they fear minorities will move into their neighborhood, also cause gentrification, according to Hyra.

The solutions of gentrification are not at the federal, state or city level, he said, but are “embedded within communities that are facing these redevelopment pressures … What we need to do is bolster [their] voices.”

Featured photo: The Colvin Institute of Real Estate held a webinar titled “Gentrification: Deracination of the Black Community in Harlem and Washington, DC.” as a part of its fall lecture series. Photo by Brittany N. Gaddy.